Nintendo making huge changes to Club Nintendo in Japan

Club Nintendo in Japan is a marvelous thing, year after year it churns out some amazing Nintendo rewards and looks like a Monet next to the 5 year old crayon drawings of the  Australian, European and North American Club Nintendo offerings.

That’s all about to change with Nintendo informing its Japanese members that there will be two big changes coming to the rewards program.

Every year, depending on how many games or consoles you register in Japan you can ‘rank up’ to be a Platinum or Gold member. Those who are Platinum or Gold at the end of year get a choice usually between a physical reward or a digital one. This year Platinum get both, gold just get a Calendar.

However this will now be the last ‘year’ of this program and these will be the last rewards given under this system. The ‘member rank’ system is being abolished. We’ve never had this system in Australia, Europe doesn’t either – North America does.

The next big change is that most hardware will no longer count toward your Club Nintendo points as they won’t be able to be registered. This includes all old hardware, Amiibo figures and accessories, even the New 3DS and New 3DS XL will not be illegible to registered. Games will be the only things that will be able to registered going forward.

If this all sounds like a bit of a bummer, it kind of is, at least for our Japanese pals. However there’s some good/interesting news, when the Club Nintendo site returns it’ll only support smartphones for mobile browsing (old Japanese feature phone support is getting the chop)  – perhaps the site (and the member rank system) is getting a revamp?